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RCMP unveils plan to tackle cybercrime

The Mounties’ strategy is designed to tackle technology-based crime that is increasingly moving beyond their ability to investigate because of advanced encryption, the global reach of crime and enhanced privacy protections.

A wall of tape back ups of confiscated hard drives and other electronic evidence stored at OPP headquarters in Orillia. (RICHARD LAUTENS / TORONTO STAR) | Order this photo

The growing threat of digital-age criminality demands “a paradigm shift in how crimes are understood and policed,” says a new cybercrime strategy released by the RCMP Wednesday.

The country’s national police force has tabled a 15-point plan, to be implemented by 2020, designed to tackle technology-based crime that is increasingly moving beyond their ability to investigate because of advanced encryption, the global reach of crime and enhanced privacy protections.

“Some of the barriers that will overcome us is access to information, both through encryption . . . and identification of the persons that may or may not be involved in that criminal activity,” said RCMP chief superintendent Jeff Adam.

“This is not as simple as catching the car down the street. This is infinitely more complex and requires a whole new way of doing business.”

Specific measures include the creation of a federal “cybercrime team” and a dedicated “intelligence unit” with new personnel recruited for their technical investigative abilities as well as better training and targeting of cybercrime.

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In all, 40 police officers and civilians will be dedicated through $30.5 million in federal funding over five years, he said.

“The same technologies that people and organizations use for legitimate purposes may be used by criminals to mask their online activities and evade detection from law enforcement,” the report reads. “Police must often find technical solutions to decrypt, unlock or otherwise deal with encryption technologies . . . and other technical roadblocks that criminals exploit to cover their digital tracks and commit cybercrimes.”

The RCMP strategy follows a Toronto Star/Scripps News investigation last month detailing how enhanced privacy measures are allowing drug dealers, organized crime members and child molesters to hide their crimes from police.

“Do we have a generation of children at risk because of this?” says RCMP deputy commissioner Peter Henschel, referring to the growing challenges faced by child exploitation investigators in Canada. “I would argue we do. It’s devastating. I don’t think the average person would believe what’s going on out there and how rampant it is.”

He acknowledges privacy advocates are “carrying the day by far in the media and elsewhere,” in part because Canadians have yet to have a discussion about the role of policing in the digital age and the risks of allowing criminality to flourish beyond the reach of police investigators.

Privacy advocates have effectively argued that enhanced privacy measures mean we are all better protected from criminal threats posed by everything from tyrannical governments to sophisticated criminals.

“We have to catch the bad guys and privacy/security people want to catch them as much as anyone else,” says Ann Cavoukian, Ontario’s former privacy commissioner and now executive director of the Privacy and Big Data Institute at Ryerson University. “But we have to protect our privacy and freedom. I really believe we can do that but we have to have that as our goal — not one to the exclusion of the other.”

Missing in the RCMP report — and the broader debate about privacy versus public safety in Canada — is comprehensive data from police detailing the scope of the problem.

Police officials across Canada admitted they have not gathered data on investigations impeded by sophisticated cybercrime techniques. Some acknowledged that the Star’s questions had prompted that internal evidence gathering that is now underway.

“We document the stuff that we do, not necessarily the stuff we don’t do,” says RCMP deputy commissioner Peter Henschel. “That’s a fundamental weakness or gap we have in having supporting data when we get in situation like this. We’re trying, but it’s hard.”

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